This is a hands-on leadership role for an architect who wants to turn strategy into delivery and have measurable impact in the short term.
The Lead Enterprise Architect is responsible for defining, governing and executing enterprise and solution architecture for Wolters Kluwer Belgium within the Tax & Accounting domain.
This role operates in a matrix organization, with a solid reporting line to the Belgian CTO and a dotted-line relationship to the Regional Architect EU West. The Lead Enterprise Architect is a core member of the Belgium Technology Management Team and plays a critical role in shaping the direction of the Belgian technology organization. The role has a strong delivery focus, working on initiatives that are actively being implemented, rather than long-term conceptual architecture only. The role embraces an AI-first mindset, ensuring AI is considered as a standard architectural option where it can deliver concrete business and product value.
Key Responsibilities:
Enterprise & Solution Architecture
- Define and maintain the enterprise architecture for Belgium, covering application landscape, integrations, data flows, cloud platforms and security.
- Ensure alignment with EU West and global Wolters Kluwer architecture principles and standards.
- Translate business and product strategy into practical, executable architecture that can be delivered in the short to mid term.
- Prepare and present architectural decisions in governance and architecture boards.
- Partner with engineering and platform teams to ensure effective use of Azure services in delivered solutions.
- Support teams in making pragmatic Azure design choices that balance speed of delivery with long-term sustainability.
Technology Leadership & Management Team Participation
- Act as a core member of the Belgium Technology Management Team.
- Actively contribute to setting the strategic direction of the Belgian technology organization.
- Provide architectural leadership and guidance in management-level discussions and decision-making.
- Represent architecture as a key enabler of business and product strategy.
Matrix Organization & Regional Alignment
- Operate effectively in a matrix structure balancing local Belgian priorities with regional (EU West) alignment.
- Collaborate closely with the Regional Architect EU West to ensure reuse, scalability and consistency across countries.
- Act as the architectural representative for Belgium in regional initiatives.
Business & Product Partnership
- Deeply understand product strategy, market needs, customer value propositions and business drivers.
Partner with Product Managers to:
- assess architectural implications of roadmap decisions
- balance delivery speed, quality and long-term sustainability
- support prioritization and trade-off discussions
- Communicate architectural topics fluently in business and product language, not only technical terms.
AI-First Mindset & Innovation
- Apply an AI-first mindset when designing solutions, considering AI capabilities as a default option where relevant.
- Translate AI opportunities into concrete, deliverable solutions, not theoretical concepts.
- Support Product Management and engineering teams in making pragmatic AI design choices aligned with business value, risk and compliance.
- Ensure AI initiatives are architected for scalability, security and integration with existing platforms.
Delivery Focus & Execution
- Strong focus on execution and delivery, not conceptual or only long-term theoretical architecture.
- Support initiatives that are actively being designed and implemented.
- Operate effectively in an environment with frequent context switching across multiple initiatives, stakeholders and priorities.
- Ensure architecture enables speed, reliability and predictable delivery.
Change & Leadership
- Drive architectural and technological change from a leadership perspective.
- Influence teams and stakeholders without formal authority
- Act as a change agent, helping teams adopt new ways of working, technologies and architectural patterns.
Technical Leadership & Governance
- Provide architectural guidance to engineering, platform and operations teams.
- Ensure architectural quality across initiatives, changes and releases.
- Act as architectural escalation point for high-impact production issues and complex technical challenges.
Why This Role Matters:
This role offers a unique opportunity to shape the future of the Belgian technology organization at Wolters Kluwer.
- The Lead Enterprise Architect is a key decision-maker, not an advisory-only role.
- Architecture decisions taken in this role directly influence product roadmaps, delivery speed and business outcomes.
- As a member of the Belgium Technology Management Team, this role has a permanent seat at the table where priorities and direction are set.
- The role focuses on real, short-term impact: initiatives designed today are implemented within the next month.
- The position combines local ownership with regional influence, shaping solutions that scale beyond Belgium.
This role is ideal for an architect who wants to drive change, deliver outcomes and lead through influence, rather than operate purely at a conceptual or long-term vision level.
Required Qualifications & Experience:
- Master’s degree in Computer Science or a closely related field is required.
- Extensive experience in an Enterprise Architect or Lead Architect role in a complex enterprise environment.
- Proven experience working in a matrix organization.
- Strong experience designing and delivering solutions on Microsoft Azure.
- Dutch and English are mandatory, other languages are a plus.
- Experience in product-driven organizations and experience in SaaS Software are a plus.
Solid knowledge of:
- Azure cloud architecture and services.
- Integration and microservices patterns.
- Security and identity solutions.
- Modern software platforms.
Core Competencies:
- Strong business and product mindset combined with deep technical expertise.
- Highly execution-oriented with a strong focus on delivery.
- Comfortable with frequent context switching.
- Influential leadership style without direct authority.
- Pragmatic, decisive and outcome-focused.
Location & Travel:
Main location: Mechelen in combination with working from home.
Travel: Frequent travel within Belgium to Wolters Kluwer offices, including Mechelen, Ghent and Hasselt.
Our Offer:
You will join a dynamic and ambitious team! The role offers variety and independence. You will work with up-to-date tools and documentation to perform your job effectively.
In addition to a competitive compensation and numerous fringe benefits, Wolters Kluwer continuously invests in the growth and skills of its employees and aims to give them every opportunity to develop.
Discover more benefits of working at Wolters Kluwer at www.wolterskluwer.com.
Our Interview Practices
To maintain a fair and genuine hiring process, we kindly ask that all candidates participate in interviews without the assistance of AI tools or external prompts. Our interview process is designed to assess your individual skills, experiences, and communication style. We value authenticity and want to ensure we’re getting to know you—not a digital assistant. To help maintain this integrity, we ask to remove virtual backgrounds and include in-person interviews in our hiring process. Please note that use of AI-generated responses or third-party support during interviews will be grounds for disqualification from the recruitment process.
Applicants may be required to appear onsite at a Wolters Kluwer office as part of the recruitment process.